I'm having problems with my NAT box. Basically, things work in general, but when visiting a fresh site (from inside the LAN), it usually doesn't get a DNS response right away. In addition, it will occasionally forget the IP at which point it goes back to that. Refreshing after it times out works about 70% of the time, and refreshing after a couple time out periods is almost guaranteed to work. I *think* that while the computer on the LAN side of the NAT gateway is having problems if I open up Lynx on the gateway itself it works, but it could just be a timing thing.

The NAT gateway runs FreeBSD 7. There is one computer on the LAN side, running Windows Server 2008 (as a desktop). The network card facing outside is vr0, the one facing inside is em0. (There is also a ral0 wireless card, but it is unused at the moment.)

My "ISP" is actually just another NAT box provided by the apartment; it gives out 192.168 addresses, so to avoid confusion I'm using 10.0 addresses on the LAN.

In addition, it will occasionally forget the IP at which point it goes back to that.

Sorry for not reading your full post, Im in rush atm

Which site the dns server *forget* the IP? I suspect the TTL is too short here. IIRC, there are some sites like facebook which uses DNS roundrobin, the TTL is set only for 1 min. If the next dns request is > 1 min after the previous one, the dns server *forgets* IP (A record) and needs to query the authorative dns server of the facebook site again.